I hope we can take this discussion in good spirit, I at least am not less a buddhist because I’m critical… It’s good to keep in mind that we deal with very complex matter here, and I would doubt simple answers. Just to pick two aspects:
- about ‘meditation’/jhanas and right view. I think we can defend almost every position here. Is a jhana with imperfect view the same as with perfected view? we can focus on the momentary peace and then we have, like Bhante Sujato pointed out, the same jhana. When we take into consideration the conditionality of states, that every state of mind is ‘going somewhere’ then imperfect-view-jhana is radically different, because the focus here is on a very different direction (because it makes a difference if we end up on mars or in open space).
From a practice point of view again I think both positions are valid and probably a balance would be wise: to develop the rightest view possible with a sensible amount of work, put it into practice, use that clarity of mind to dive deeper into the teaching, clarifying the view a bit more, gaining deeper meditation, etc. I for example sit often in meditation and wonder 'how is this state of mind fed by wrong view? I don’t actively sit there, thinking ‘I am this, I am that, and as such I meditate’. It’s a mess, all kinds of views guide my perception, mostly unconscious, and it takes me a lot of work in subtly to identify a speck of hidden atta-belief, which results in more peace. But to me this is super-difficult, to trace the mind-reality of imperfect views, beyond the intellectual ‘I’m not supposed to identify as anything’. And with my limited practice I can only wonder how on earth those saintly practitioners who attained super lofty samadhis, what ‘markers’ do they have in their experience that indicate whether there is still a subtle atta or not?
Which leads to the second very complex point of teachers, their attainments and teachings. Obviously I believe there was a Buddha with an amazing teaching and teaching capabilities. But his words have been edited surely by people with imperfect memory, less teaching skills, and probably not all of them were arahants. The search for authentic teaching is arduous and I’m so grateful for the monks and lay people (of which many are here!) who take on this task. I at least also benefit a lot from more contemporary teachers, for example the Thai tradition, and there we sometimes have the notion of ‘the-one-who-knows’. What is this?? did they introduce atta through the back door? or is it a simplified way to address something that would be too complex to unbox all the time? my point is that giving an authentic verbal expression to experiences, insights, and teaching in general is a walk on a tight rope, and not everyone is blessed with perfect teaching skills, even if they’re arahants, and we can’t only rely on the verbal level in search for inspiration but are in a more complex feedback loop of reading, practising and understanding.
